Tag: coachee

This year my summer holidays wasn’t only about going to the beach, eating ice cream, reading books, discovering new spots nor any arty farty stuff while a Summer storm ravaged the Hague. Lots of my attention went to rebirthing. Out of pure necessity.

Day in and day out I have guided rebirthing sessions. I’ve undergone rebirthing sessions as well and it has been an exciting and insightful journey inwards. It all started in February this year. My partner came back from a rebirthing weekend organised by an institute named AUMM. His rebirthing experience and stories about other people’s sessions made me very curious. As if my wish was picked up by the universe, I am enormously grateful that I was guided into a rebirthing session only one week later. I cried unstoppably and without a sense of time for an hour.

Let me explain to you what rebirthing does. Rebirthing consists of different breathing techniques, but the one breathing technique which activates surpressed emotional blockages goes as follows: while breathing we connect inhalation with exhalation and exhalation with inhalation, in doing so we create a circular motion of breath. In rebirthing this is called ‘connected breathing’. This connected breathing could activate different physical symptoms like feeling cold all over your body or the opposite super hot like fire, a tingling sensation in arms, legs, face or just about everywhere, itching and the sensation of wanting to curl your feet up or move your knees from side to side. Whichever physical symptom arises depends on who you are, what kind of emotional trauma’s you’ve had and in which stage of emotional consciousness you are in.

By the end of June I started using ‘connected breathing’ in my coaching practice in combination with coaching techniques such as Neuro Linguistic Programming and Social Panorama. The results were fenomenal. In this stage my experience was only based upon my and my partner’s rebirthing experiences and by reading the books written by the founders of the AUMM institute. Before I decided to put my knowledge and experience to practice I had been through a major personal development regarding my role as a professional life coach; I had eagerly watched Suzanne Powell on YouTube and it was the first time in years that I found myself a teacher, someone I wanted to learn from. Her knowledge and experience affirmed how I live and think as I guide others to discover themselves while letting go of emotional burden.

Parallel to this development I struggled a week long with different life courses I could run: shall I write my book on high sensitivity, attend a four-year study on rebirthing or go for our second child? Off course I discussed all of this with my partner. After some talk we decided to go for our second child. I am happy to announce that I am almost four months into pregnancy. So ‘rebirthing’ has another meaning to me; going for our second real-time birth experience! I have to say, this life changing decision has put every work-relation ambition I had in a broader perspective. Off course writing a book and study can wait, but I would have been enlightened If I didn’t struggle with the following: how can I continue my journey in rebirthing when my full attention went to family and working life?

Out of personal and professional interest I did find time to read the books on rebirthing. And somehow the answer to my question just appeared out of doing my work. While guiding sessions one day I used the rebirthing technique without a lot of thinking. As I guide intuitively I just do what I feel is needed to enable the coachee to let go of limiting thoughts, behavior and emotions. As I have mentioned before, the results were fenomenal. Rebirthing to me has shown it’s positive effects while guiding people who have a hard time talking about their feelings. The positive results took me to investigate the topic even more. Within a short period of time I have mastered this skill with help of books, YouTube video’s, pure practice and loads of reflection; writing down every single detail of the rebirthing process.

This blog closes off an insightful and breathtaking Summer holidays, but the journey continues! As I mentioned in the first paragraph, this journey was started out of necessity. Some people who follow my writings already know, but to the ones who don’t know, my partner is suffering a severe headache for almost six years. So embarking on this journey wasn’t because we were so thrilled to cry our eyes out, instead we had a goal in mind and this is ‘living a life in good and vibrant health’. Before I go, there is one more detail I would like to share: one tiny part of me questioned my professionalism in embarking our rebirthing journey without having done a four-year long study. At the beginning of this week I got hold of a book by Susanna Tamaro ‘Louisito’. On the back of the book I read that she acquired international fame by one of her books called ‘Follow Your Heart’. I went online to read some reviews and came across the paragraph below:

‘And when later many paths open for you and you are not sure which one to take, don’t haphazardly choose a path, but sit and wait. Breathe with full confidence as deep as you breathed on the day you came into the world, without being distracted by something, wait and keep waiting. Do not move, be quiet and listen to your heart. Whenever that speaks to you, get up and follow his voice.’ ~ Susanna Tamaro

These words took away my doubt. I am very happy and grateful to have followed the voice of my heart. The rebirthing journey continues while every cell in my body vibrates of professionalism and a strong motivation to live my life in good health and help others to live theirs.

Like this:

Recently I did a session in between these high trees. It was wonderful; smelling the leaves, feeling the wind and the free space of nature. Almost as wonderful as doing a session at the port of Scheveningen which I did a while ago.

During this session the coachee was speaking from a deep-felt sadness. Over and over again sessions have proved that long hidden emotions have a lot to tell. The emotions have a lot to tell the coachee and to the ones who contributed to the existence of these emotions. For an hour I was standing there; guiding, listening and with the help of my internal clock I worked towards closing of the session.

Afterwards the coachee told me that it seemed only seven minutes of talking. Seven minutes?! There was a huge gap between our perception of time. To me it proves that long hidden deep-felt emotions are extremely alive! You could feel like a little kid again who was bullied in the past or the young adult who was fired for no good reason. When one allows these emotions come to the surface one will eventually feel freed from exhaustion, headache, anxiety and other fysical and mental blockages.

Like this:

My experience with coachees is that most people do have some kind of idea about what they want in life, but they don’t know how to get there.

1. Finetuning personal goals
During the first session we talk about these ideas on work, love relationship and other wishes regarding their personal development. Like I said, most people have some kind of idea about what they want in life, but when they find themselves talking to a coach they actually finetune what they want. For example: I want a job which will match my studies, knowledge and job experience. We can finetune this goal into: I want a job in which I can mainly work with people away from the desk. I am a real people person. We can then add this to the previous goal and we get a much clearer idea of where we should head to.

2. Identity coaching: who are you?
After having set out the personal goals of the coaching traject we really start talking about how you can get there. To get there you need yourself! What do I mean by this? You need to know what your skills are, what you are capable of doing, what your strong and weak points are and how you can put your skills out there to get what you want. Most of the time I come in (into your life) as a coach to broaden and deepen your view on yourself as a person and on life. There are different coaching ways to get out there what you’re good at.

3. Changing mood: get positive and focusedFurther down the road: there is no need to talk any further about what you want in life if you’re mentally not ready to think about those stuff. So first of all, I will get you through your world of limiting beliefs. When thinking back on a session I believe the most important thing in which I succeeded during this session was changing the mood of the coachee. At start the coachee was really sad; eyes were hanging, radiation a bit greyish and tone-of-voice was empty. After around 15 minutes I started provoking. From that moment onwards the coachee’s mood became more and more positive; laughing, stronger non-verbal communication, more strength in tone-of-voice and even joking around.

And when you feel in the mood again we get back on the tracks you have chosen to be.

Like this:

When I met Chungmei again for my first session, we hadn’t seen for years. One wonderful day I added her on Facebook and we got in touch again. The timing was a total coincidence, but it was about the right moment. Between us, there was a distance of 1000 kilometers which we covered easily via Skype. When I started to talk to her I quickly got caught by her positive energy, and her very open attitude towards life and the experiences of people.

To me, that felt like a memory of a long gone time. The negative thoughts were never that strong in me as now, as many annoying things had happened in my life. I think everyone feels down at one time or the other. But what if you feel that much down that you slowly start to forget about the positives, and how it feels to feel positively… I feel completely out of control to successfully organize my future, be it in job, career or partnership. That is the situation in which Chungmei has offered her help to me.

I am curious to see what she would do. I know she has a different approach towards helping people. A very positive one. One of the things she mentions very quickly during the talk is the spiral of negative emotions. “If you repeat an action it becomes true or manifest”, she says. And yes, I am aware how often I came back to the same negative thoughts, not helping me to change even a bit of my situation but finally just ending up in complaining about the conditions I am in. My coach listens to me a lot and gives suggestions what to do. I am kind of empty inside, so there should be a huge amount of space to be filled up. What really annoys me is a good question as it can help me to focus on the real cause to get over.

Chungmei suggests that I should emphasize my positive qualities and skills. I even get a homework for doing this! So I am writing down what comes into my mind, all the qualities I can think of! Slowly the paper is filling… I note down my values… fairness, tolerance, harmony… and surely I will forget some of them, or I won’t realize that some values and features of me are a good quality which can be very helpful in my personal or professional life. If I see them clearly they might become even more true. However, I have the strong impression that other people don’t see or realize it. Perhaps Chungmei might give me some idea in what way I can make them clearer to other people. And how better to use them in my life for myself, focusing on it and making me overcome all the hindrances I am facing now…

Like this:

This feeling of being alive, energetic and happy has its source in being ‘coaching’. Or even bettter put: in being ‘the spark that lights up fires’. I’ll explain…Yesterday we had a nice day out in the park. I did some reading, playing with Amé and playing a bit of capoeira. My man and a friend were kicking ass by doing capoeira: free & easy to get the muscles loosend up. This afternoon and evening we had conversations about my work, psychology and psychotherapy; in short ‘breaking through destructive emotions’.

While talking about my work I was reminded by something ‘magical’ which runs through my coaching practice and has defined my practice from the start in 2004.

When I started in 2004 I received an e-mail from an ex-colleague of mine. Someone I worked with during my bachelor communication in Rotterdam. At that time she was somewhere in South-America and she sent an e-mail to her family. I was put in ‘cc’ and I was the only one. Hmmm…how odd, because we hadn’t had contact for already 5 years. I answered and because of our e-mail exchange we met up in café Dudok in Rotterdam. I told her about my work. She told me about her life at that moment and said: “I need to hire you as a coach!”. Amazing, my first coachee, via a digital wink of the universe.

This ‘magical’ thing is ungoing. I could go on and on about synchronic anekdotes from my practice (2004 -up until now), but I will leave you with one happened recently…

Not long ago I had a talk with someone quit racional explaining what the term synchronicity actually means. He was like “I don’t believe in coincidences. They just happen and not for a specific reason. Only an hour later synchronicity crossed his path and I was happy to be around to witness this. While he was looking for the ‘how’, how it came to be that a specific country appeared on the screen, I asked him: “What did it do to you seeing the name of the country?” “This country is special to me. It makes me special. I was born there.” From that moment on I was sure that I would eventually coach him or be of help in some way.

Like this:

September 2008 I decided it was time for ME. Time to get to know the real me, to reveal the real me and most important to be happy about me. To accomplish these “easy” tasks I decided to talk to Chungmei.

Who was I when I started my coaching sessions……………………

I was 28 years old, living in Amsterdam. I had a great job at a big international company, which came with a company car. When it came down to career planning I was very confident, I knew exactly what I wanted and how to accomplish my goals. However my confidence level on the social front was totally opposite. I had been single for almost 4 years, after being hurt and humiliated by my ex-boyfriend. Even though he broke my heart and was the cause of me losing faith in men, I was still having sex with him for a long time after the break-up. Please don’t ask me why! In the meantime I was also looking for Mr. Perfect…..Tall, black and handsome, ambitious, thoughtful, funny, romantic, between 30-35 has his own car, doesn’t live with his mom and to complete this not very demanding listJ. I am so not ready for kids so looking for a childless man.

All in all I wanted to become more confident and to be able to express my emotions more easily. In various coaching sessions we have gone through different coachingtechniques and I always went home with homework. Chungmei and I talked about the definition of my “dream life”, how to deal with having too high expectations. In which settings I am most happy. She gave me assignments like telling my cousin that I love her and that I will always be there for her. I mustn’t assume that she knows and take her for granted. She gave me advice on how I could get a better emotional connection with my mom. Months went by and I saw myself opening up, becoming more confident and just feeling happier about myself. I guess other people saw this to. During this time I met a nice man. I can say he is my ideal man. “What did I say again in the beginning my ideal man was; Tall, black, Handsome and between 30-35yrs…………….Well my hubby now is White, 43 and does everything on his bike. He has two children a 16-year old son and a 10-year old daughter. He’s sexy, thoughtful, we laugh a lot together. I can always count on him. He has beautiful blue eyes and he has a genuine kind smile.

I am in a very good place now. Very happy about ME and therefore able to be happy with somebody else.

What is Skype? When you surf to http://www.skype.com you can make an account and then we can start phoning each other through the internet connection without any additional costs. If you have any questions about Skypecoaching, get in touch with me via mail or Skype and fire away. My Skypename is: orchidoflife.